The Vibrating Drum - developing a practice for the modern percussionist

Ingar Zach

Over the last 60 years, contemporary percussionists have been investigating the potential of their instruments beyond established classical techniques, making use of a variety of preparations and techniques, additional electronic amplification and manipulation, and alternative setups. In my artistic research project The Vibrating Drum, I apply my background as a percussionist working in various experimental disciplines towards a consideration of how the vibrating speaker (the transducer) can be used to produce sustained sounds. Over the course of my project, I have assembled a haptic system comprising vibrating speakers in contact with the drum skin, small amplifiers, and iPads, that allows me to create and develop new artistic works for percussion. My methodology entails giving a series of solo concerts, where I present different versions of the setup and material from my ongoing research. I have also introduced my material in collaborative projects and explored how vibrating material interacts with specific acoustic spaces. To produce my formal artistic results, I edited and structured the recorded material, which resulted in two solo albums, a video installation, and a final concert. The aim of this research is to broaden my own practice and to offer a tool for modern percussionists, composers, educators, and others for whom my research and approach would be relevant in the future.

Cicchitaredu

Dialogue with Jim Denley.

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Jim Denley has been engaged with experimental and improvised music as a musician, producer, writer, and researcher for more than 40 years. He is a major influence in the experimental music scene in Australia and also internationally. In the late 80s, he co-founded the electro-acoustic text/music group Machine for Making Sense. Collaborations, his radio feature for the ABC, won the Prix Italia in 1989. In 1990, he was a member of Derek Bailey’s Company for a week of concerts in London, and his album Through Fire, Crevice, and the Hidden Valley, recorded in the Budawang Mountains, received an Honorary mention in the Digital Musics category of the Prix Ars Electronica in 2008. He has been involved with the musical collective Splinter Orchestra in Sydney since 2001 and releases most of his music on his own label Splitrec, which he started in 1989. He is currently conducting a practice-based research project at the UNSW Sydney titled In Weather: Co-creation through listening/sounding/recording. The project is essentially about improvising outdoors and developing a truly eco-musical process with sites, surroundings, and organisms. Jim visits a number of sites that he returns to again and again in order to play and record.

Jim Denley is a force of nature and a truly inspiring human being with whom I have had the privilege of spending time and playing together. I met Jim for the first time when the Norwegian guitarist Kim Myhr invited me to join their duo collaboration, a group that was later named MURAL. In the period from 2007 to 2015, we toured the world together with MURAL. The highlight and the culmination of this ensemble was undoubtedly the four-hour-long concert in the Rothko Chapel in Houston, Texas in 2013, which was later documented on the album Tempo. Jim and I share a common point of contact: both of us worked in the improvised music scene in London in the ‘90s and met many times with the legendary guitarist Derek Bailey. During my PhD, I have had several fruitful conversations with Jim. In the dialogues below, you can hear our reflections around various aspects of the piece “Cicchitaredu,” the opening track of the album Strumento di etimo incerto, which is the second release documenting the artistic research project The Vibrating Drum. The transcription of the dialogue is available here.

drones and underlying hum
in salubrious isolation
mundanities flow uninterrupted

whispering wooden cracks,
a boat in the mist
the hiss of water
waves back and forth

Cicchitaredu. (Duration 22:52)

Reflection 1. (Duration 12:33)
About the musical discourse. The description of what we hear in the piece Cicchitaredu as the music moves along. The transducers, the frequencies, the preparations.
A transcription of the dialogue can be found here.

Reflection 2. (Duration 10:00)
About the anechoic chamber. The distinction between space and place. The musical material.

A transcription of the dialogue can be found here.

Reflection 3. (Duration 11:26)

The choice of sounds. The ambiguity between electronic and acoustic sounds. Layering of sounds and the hybrid instrument. Aspects of time. Patterns and recurrences. Adaptability in improvisation.
A transcription of the dialogue can be found here.

Reflection 4. (Duration 9:42)

Sound as material. Material and mattering. Musical cells as building blocks for layering. Layering becomes the composition. Memorable material creates a musical moment. Non-linear music. A creation with place.

A transcription of the dialogue can be found here.

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Ingar Zach - The Vibrating Drum - developing a practice for the modern percussionist - 2024